This invention relates to the construction of a meat tenderizer, and more particularly to the cutting edges and driving machinery therefor.
The muscle tissue of the meat is often covered with a muscle membrane, and at its end portion is a tendon. One process of treating meat material when processing meat is referred to as a muscle removing process in which the muscle membrane and the tendon are removed; however, it is difficult to completely remove them. In the part of the meat covered with muscle membrane, it is difficult to allow a salting agent to penetrate thereinto in the salting process, which is liable to result in poor waterholding and poor coloring. Furthermore, the muscle membrane and the tendon are shrunk greatly when heated, as a result of which the water contained therein is oozed out to deteriorate the quality of the product. These drawbacks can be considerably eliminated by employing the process of tenderizing in cutting meat.
In manufacturing meat products such as sirloin ham, boneless ham and pressed ham, the meat is sometimes subjected to a process of "tenderizing" in order to make the quality of products uniform and to increase the yield. In this process, a mass of meat is broken down or the muscles in the meat are cut with suitable edges, to thereby increase the surface area of the meat. Increasing the surface are of the meat means that the area of the meat brought into contact with a salting agent and various seasonings in the salting process, and in the processes before and after salting, is increased. Accordingly, the salting process can be uniformly accomplished in a very short time.
In most of the tenderizers employed in the meat processing industries, in general, a head with several tens of edges embedded in a metal plate is moved vertically (up and down), while a mass of meat to be processed is intermittently moved on a belt conveyor, pausing beneath the vertically-moving edges to be processed.
In a conventional mechanized tenderizer, the vertical movement of the head is, in general, carried out by a hydraulic cylinder; that is, the head is driven by hydraulic pressure. Therefore, the time required to move the head up and down is relatively long, and accordingly, the meat processing efficiency per unitary time is low. It is very difficult to achieve an operating speed in excess of 30 strokes per minute. In addition, it is rather difficult to hold a mass of meat while breaking it down with the tenderizer. Furthermore, the travelling speed of the cutting edges is relatively low, thus making it extremely difficult to satisfactorily cut and penetrate mutton or pork covered with thick muscles. Thus, the conventional tenderizer is unsatisfactory in these respects.
Conventional vertically-moving tenderizers are also disadvantageous in the following points: The distance between the edge assembly in its downward position and the bottom of the meat is no more than 10 mm; that is, it is impossible for the edge assembly to sufficiently stick the meat. In order to increase the meat tenderizing effect as much as possible, it is important to allow the tips of the edge assembly to stick into the meat deeply and positively. Furthermore, with a view to employing the tenderizer as an industrial machine, it is desirable that it can be smoothly operated and it has a great treating capability per unitary time. Thus, although shutting down the conveyor is an acceptable technique for stopping the meat beneath the cutting edges in a tenderizer having a low operating speed of 30 strokes per minute, it would be unsatisfactory at higher speeds and, in any event, is hard on the machinery.
Furthermore, the configuration and construction of the edges of the tenderizer should suitably match the properties of the meat material. Mutton, pork and horse meat are mainly employed as meat material to be processed into meat products; however, they are greatly different from one another in nature or property. Accordingly, it is necessary to provide edges different in configuration and construction for different kinds of meat. If the configuration and construction of the edges are not suitable, the desired result cannot be obtained, and a counter result may be obtained, e.g., sometimes visible cuts remain on the meat product.